The Language of Love Through the Hebrew Language: Reading Amichai’s ‘Layla’

Abstract

This article is a reading of "Layla" by Yehuda Amichai, a deceptively simple poem, which is built upon a systematic part with morphological qualities and possibilities of grammar of the Hebrew language. I say that, playing with suffixes in Hebrew and number and gender markers, and lead to estrangement and subverting the expectations of the average Hebrew reader/speaker, Amichai works in the sense that it provides as a "language of love".